BAER, JOSEPH:

Founder of a firm of booksellers of Frankfort-on-the Main; born in the last half of the eighteenth century; died in 1851. A small second-hand bookseller's stall was established by Baer at Bockenheim in 1785. After encountering many obstacles, he succeeded in obtaining citizenship at Frankfort, and settled thereupon in that city, carrying on a trade in second-hand books. The business subsequently developed, and became one of the greatest in Germany. Many of the great European libraries, among them the Imperial Public Library of St. Petersburg, are largely dependent on it for their supply of rare works. On the occasion of its centenary (1885) the firm published a jubilee catalogue of 10,000 works in its second-hand department.